Trying a man for murder in the 1979 disappearance of 6-year-old Etan Patz has come with obstacles created by the passage of time: Many witnesses, including the lead detective, have died. Memories of those still alive have faded. And the piles of investigative records from the case include untold missing documents — some of them in three boxes discovered in a police storage room in just the past few days, even as the trial is well underway. "The historical file is incomplete," defense attorney Harvey Fishbein said after news of the boxes surfaced this week. "It shows the fact that no one knows what happened in 1979, and the investigation's been massive and the...

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Trying a man for murder in the 1979 disappearance of 6-year-old Etan Patz has come with obstacles created by the passage of time: Many witnesses, including the lead detective, have died. Memories of those still alive have faded.
And the piles of...

NEW YORK — His 6-year-old face became a symbol of parents' darkest fear, animating a national push to find lost children and a cultural shift toward hypervigilant child rearing.
As a suspect in Etan Patz's disappearance heads to trial 35 years later,...

Thirty-five years after the disappearance of a 6-year-old boy in Manhattan ushered in an era of protectiveness for America's children, trial began Friday for a mentally ill man with a low IQ who confessed to his murder and kidnapping.Etan Patz (AY'-tahn...